Guns in the Gallery

TWENTY-EIGHT

‘So Chervil didn’t see Giles the night of Fennel’s death?’ asked Carole.

‘No. She left him at the Private View. He was supposed to be joining her at Butterwyke House, but then he texted her to say that he was out drinking with Denzil Willoughby and would be a bit late. He didn’t turn up till the following morning.’

‘Did Chervil say why she went to the treatment yurt in the middle of the night?’

‘She gave me some guff about waking up with a sense of foreboding and being drawn towards the place, which sounded like a pack of lies to me.’

‘I’m surprised.’

Carole’s words had Jude fazed for a moment, but then she got it. The implication was that ‘a sense of foreboding’ and ‘being drawn towards the place’ were exactly the kind of New Age mumbo-jumbo that appealed to Jude. She didn’t bother to rise to the insinuation, instead saying, ‘At least we now know for sure that it was murder.’

‘And we know that Giles Green was the perpetrator.’

‘I’m not so convinced about that. He was certainly involved, but I’m wondering whether they planned the thing together.’

‘Hm. And the last message on Fennel’s mobile was presumably from Giles?’

‘From his number, yes. Chervil admitted that.’

They were back in the High Tor kitchen. By the cold Aga, Gulliver looked balefully at the bandage on his infected paw. In the Renault on the way back from the vet’s he’d tried to chew it off, but now recognized that was a battle he was not going to win.

Carole tapped her teeth thoughtfully. ‘Of course, Giles Green has in theory got an alibi for the relevant night.’

‘Oh, come on, Carole. “Drinking with Denzil Willoughby at the Dauncey Hotel”? What kind of an alibi’s that? Denzil’s virtually told us that those two’d tell any lie to get the other one out of a spot.’

‘Yes.’ Carole looked at her watch. ‘Well, one thing I think we can be pretty sure of is that by now Giles Green has had a full action replay of the conversation you’ve just had with Chervil.’

‘I would think so, yes.’

‘Which might of course mean that you are now at risk. That old cliché beloved of crime writers about a person who’s killed once not being afraid to do so again.’

‘I don’t know why you’re looking so smug, Carole. He knows that you were involved in the investigation too. If I’m at risk, I’m certainly not the only one.’

‘So the question is: what do we do? Just wait till Giles Green contacts us?’

Jude spread her hands helplessly wide. ‘What else can we do?’

‘Well, now we definitely know it was murder, maybe you should get back in touch with your friend Detective Inspector Hodgkinson and suggest she reopens the official enquiry . . .?’

‘Ooh.’ A dubious look. ‘I’m not sure that we’ve got enough evidence to do that yet, have we?’

Carole grinned broadly. ‘I’m so glad you said that, Jude.’ Handing over to the cops during one of their investigations always did seem to be a bit of a cop-out.

Jude was unsurprised to have a phone call that Thursday afternoon from Giles Green. He wanted to come and see her. She agreed, but told him that Carole would be there too. Partly she wanted a witness for anything the young man might say, but she had a safety motive too. If Giles really had murdered Fennel Whittaker . . .

He arrived much less flustered than either Ned or Chervil had been. As ever, he was wearing a pinstriped suit (Carole and Jude were beginning to wonder whether he possessed any casual clothes). He accepted the offer of a cup of coffee, and his demeanour was one of urbane reasonableness. There’s been some minor misunderstanding, his manner seemed to say, which I’m sure we can sort out very quickly.

When they were all supplied with drinks, Jude said, ‘I assume that Chervil has told you about the conversation we had earlier.’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Well, it would seem to me,’ said Carole rather beadily, ‘that you have some explanations to provide.’

‘I can understand why you would think that.’

‘You don’t deny that you knew about the note that Fennel had written at the time of her first suicide attempt?’

‘No, I don’t. Chervil had shown it to me.’

‘And you knew where she kept it? In the file in her bedroom at Butterwyke House?’

‘Yes, I knew that.’

‘And presumably you have recently spent some time in that bedroom?’

‘I certainly have,’ he replied roguishly. To Carole and Jude he seemed far too relaxed, unaffected by the seriousness of the allegations against him.

‘So you had the opportunity to take the suicide note?’

‘I had. On many occasions. But the fact remains that I didn’t.’

‘Chervil seems to think that you did.’

‘Chervil is trying to cover her back.’

‘Oh?’

‘Look, all this is very difficult for her, poor love.’

‘I’m sure it is,’ said Carole.

‘She’s had a lot to cope with over the last few months. Our relationship has been good, but it hasn’t always been easy.’ Carole and Jude exchanged looks. Was this a reference to his reputation for violence to his girlfriends? ‘The thing is, for some reason I can’t fathom, my mother doesn’t approve of Chervil.’

‘I thought the reason was that she preferred your wife,’ said Carole tartly. ‘She thinks you should get back with Nikki.’

‘Oh yes, that’s certainly true.’

‘We have actually seen Nikki . . . you know, since the Private View.’

If Carole had thought she’d get a response from this small bombshell, she was disappointed. ‘Yes, I know,’ said Giles coolly. ‘Up at Denzil’s workshop.’

Of course the two men were in each other’s pockets. Anything Denzil Willoughby knew was pretty soon known by Giles Green.

‘While we were there,’ said Jude softly, ‘he got the news of his mother’s death.’

‘Yes, he was very cut up about that. They were very close.’

‘Whereas his relationship with his father . . .?’

‘Was not so close, no.’

‘Their chief argument being that Addison Willoughby kept his son short of funds?’

‘That was part of it. There were a lot of reasons why they didn’t get on. Denzil didn’t like the way Addison had treated his mother.’

‘And of course,’ Carole interposed, ‘it’s Denzil Willoughby who’s supplied your alibi for the night of Fennel Whittaker’s death.’

‘Yes.’ The smug smile had returned. ‘We were drinking together in the Dauncey Hotel.’

‘All night?’

‘All night,’ he confirmed complacently. They knew they’d never shake him on that. They also knew that the alibi was just as likely to be false as genuine.

Carole tried a different approach. ‘Did you tell anyone else that you’d seen Fennel’s suicide note?’

‘Why on earth should I have done that?’

‘The person who left it by her body must have known of its existence.’

‘They did.’

‘Are you saying you know who left it?’

‘Of course I am. Chervil left it there.’

‘What are you saying?’ asked Jude. ‘That Chervil killed her sister?’

‘No, of course I’m not saying that. Chervil found Fennel dead in the treatment yurt. After the time in Pimlico she had no problem recognizing what had happened. Her sister had killed herself. But she thought people might misinterpret the death, might even think it had been murder, if there wasn’t a suicide note there. So she collected the one that she’d kept in her bedroom at Butterwyke House and put it beside Fennel’s body.’

‘That’s nonsense,’ protested Jude. ‘Why on earth should she have done that?’

‘I don’t know why, just take my word for it, that’s what she did!’ For the first time in their encounter Giles Green was in danger of losing his cool.

‘And did she take Fennel’s phone?’ asked Carole. ‘The one on which the last message had come from your mobile?’

‘She took the phone. But the last message was not from me. It was from Chervil herself. She’d fixed to meet Fennel in the treatment yurt. That’s why she took the mobile and destroyed it. She thought it might incriminate her.’

‘You mean, if it had been found, people might have thought Chervil murdered her sister?’

Giles Green shrugged. ‘It’s a point of view,’ he said infuriatingly.

‘He’s protecting someone,’ said Carole when they were once again alone in the front room of Woodside Cottage.

‘I think I agree with you, but who?’

‘Himself? I’d still rather put him in the frame as a murderer than Chervil.’

‘Yes, he has a funny way of showing his affection for her, hasn’t he? Didn’t worry him at all when we suggested she might have killed her sister.’

‘I think that was relief that we were naming a suspect who wasn’t him.’

‘Or who wasn’t the person he’s trying to protect,’ suggested Jude.

‘And who might that person be?’

‘You tell me.’

‘Well, I was just thinking,’ said Carole. ‘Suppose Chervil had told either her mother or father that she’d kept the suicide note . . .?’